As enterprises continue to adopt the cloud at a rapid pace, it is no longer a differentiator. In fact, Gartner estimates that more than half of corporate IT spending in the categories of application software, infrastructure, business process services and systems infrastructure will be spent on migrating to cloud models by 2025, while two-thirds of software spending will be for the same purpose. Thus, the $1.3 trillion that was at stake for such migrations in 2022, will have grown to $1.8 trillion in three years’ time.

Clearly, the time has come to find mechanisms to generate greater added value for each investment made in the cloud. In this context, the importance of cloud monitoring platforms emerges. 

These are unified systems that are part of cloud management solutions and incorporate both manual and automated tools to monitor the performance and availability of applications, infrastructure elements, websites and data access mechanisms. 

Total visibility

Is the app reliable and robust? Is the tool working optimally? Is maximum data transfer speed achieved for critical solutions? Is there a better way to do what is being done? Are we paying the right cost for the performance we are getting? These are just some of the fundamental questions IT administrators ask themselves when assessing, analyzing and verifying the operational status of cloud resources. 

Monitoring platforms also enable 360° visibility into what is happening in the cloud, including both in-house facilities within the organization and public clouds or edge infrastructures: from client flow to application usage intensity to log data. 

Unified dashboards

All these features can be easily «understood» thanks to unified dashboards where specific alerts, status of certain metrics (such as service level targets) or traffic can be viewed at any given time.

The use of APIs (Application Programming Interface), i.e. small pieces of software that allow the products and services of one system to be exposed, communicated and made available for use by others, is ideal for delineating tailored alerts.

Acting before it happens

Generally speaking, these platforms are independent of geography: they monitor infrastructures that can be physically located in any corner of the planet. Therefore, they enable action to be taken and workloads to be redirected in time, even in situations such as natural disasters or power outages in a particular region.

They are also cloud or infrastructure provider agnostic solutions: the more open the tool is, the more flexible and comprehensive its functionalities will be.

Moreover, these platforms promote proactive detection of errors, anomalies, unauthorized changes or unexpected patterns. In this way, problems can be addressed before they cause significant loss or major damage. When a conflict is detected, these platforms also help to trace it back to its source, to detect the causes and avoid its repetition.

The main benefit of cloud monitoring is an overall improvement in the customer experience: it ensures that every user gets what they need, with the performance they require and from where they are.

Migration to the cloud is massive, and that makes it increasingly important to find mechanisms, such as monitoring platforms, to get additional value from every penny invested in the cloud.